


In My Hand

by PhrasalUsernamesAnnoyMe



Series: In My Head [1]
Category: Doki Doki Literature Club! (Visual Novel)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-03
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-03-26 10:44:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 15,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13856172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PhrasalUsernamesAnnoyMe/pseuds/PhrasalUsernamesAnnoyMe
Summary: A story where Monika has flashbacks that become a larger narrative.





	1. A Box

She lie in bed, the cracks, seemingly innumerable in her field of vision, fragmenting the blinds meant to guard her face from the moon illuminating Monika’s emerald irides in periodic fashion. The box lying adjacent to her nightstand, though not initially at the forefront of her mind, sweeps across the horizon of her thoughts with a dart of her eyes; promoting a shift —like that dainty diagonal sit on the thighs girls her age execute with ease, but with more pressure placed on her core— in the posture of her lower, slender limbs that lifts her torso with a curvature forcing her breast to press against, and overlap slightly, her arm. The deviousness of her contortion gives her the appearance of someone in the most promiscuous of circumstances. It seems as if the box prompting her insomnia was almost compelling her to continue engaging in the behaviors which the walls of the stoic fortification were meant to seal away.

Monika reaches a hesitant hand, shaking weakly, towards the chrome push-lock fastening the crimson chest, its leather-rimmed exterior growing ever more taunting, before a flashing nostalgia prompts her inner narrative to shift abruptly— she’s back in the clubroom again. God, how long’s it been?

 

“I just don’t get it, ya baka.” Natsuki, with mouth hanging open about midway in a look of confrontational disarray, takes an assertive step forward, her tomboyish thighs prompting a slight gyration in her skirt. “You start to read manga with me, but now you just read those stupid books with Yuri.”

Sayori begins sweating slightly. “I-I get to read with whoever I want!” Sayori minutely panics, the glisten on her forehead —oscillating with the rise and fall of her upper jaw— displaying her uncertainty with a swaying stoicism from the angle of an overtly dismissive Monika. “Besides, why does it matter to you who I read with?” That’s not the reason Natsuki’s upset, and she knows it, but Sayori is helpless in her defenses— she doesn’t know that.

“Well,” Natsuki puffs her pinchable cheeks, “y’ don’t have to make me feel sorry for you like that! I was offering to read with you ’cuz I thought you’d like it. I don’t care about it, or anything.” Rolled into a half-curl, her fists morphing into flat, dainty protrusions, she panically glances at Yuri who garners a mouth-quivering look of distress. She hopes Sayori won’t notice the pen Yuri’s holding; that wouldn’t be good. “Fine! Whatever! I’m not upset, so don’t comfort me! I’m….” She pivots her ribcage —hair bouncing slightly— towards Yuri, still with extended cheeks while her pinkly highlighted orbs coat with moisture. Monika exits promptly, sensing an all-too-familiar quiver on Natsuki’s lip will soon follow.

Yuri interjects. “Perhaps it would be beneficial to maintain your presence, Monika.” Yuri wags her pen as if a grandfather clock’s pendulum. “I may have vice-presidential disciplinary authorities, but I feel they would be ignored given the divisiveness of the quarrel and my being the object of dissension.” She moves —stopping the pen in her other hand afterword, the final movement wavering in the same direction as Yuri’s swivel— to see Monika already departed from the vicinity however, and thus begins gliding her hand up her thigh to caress her finger across the carved ridges in the handle of her knife. That girl, she was just so… deviant. She raps her fingers attached to the hand opposite the pocketed palm —the latter now curled with firm adherence to the blade handle’s form, the chipped scars of previous exertions inebriating her with a docile mania— against the cover of her book; its sound is that of Monika’s footsteps, enlightening Yuri with chimes of unstable, shaken plotting.

Dismissing the now balling Sayori, Yuri slinks behind a desk and locates a small butterscotch candy. This is Natsuki’s favorite. Yuri recalls, somewhat hazily, a Halloween get-together where Natsuki expressed gratitude to her in much the same way they would assemble during their future romantic altercations now several months put to rest. Yearning wafts over Yuri as she sporadically dismisses the flashing thoughts of the cottonnously soft skin of the childish subordinate she once owned and dominated with a forcefulness only brought about by this precious jewel of a girl— how Yuri longed to feel such divine flesh once more.

But, her new target lie in wait, an enticing, albeit hesitantly so, reward should she be pursued. Stepping —bounding, a near skip— into one of the many aisles between the various secretaires, Yuri gracefully escorts herself some three steps from the door frame from which Monkia shall be appearing at any moment. An ominous air, permeating from her figure, envelops the doorway. A gate to the entropic looseness of both the thoughts of this unspoken, Lovecraftian bipolic, as well as the squabble unfolding in its foreboding backdrop, she ensures Monika’s encapture. Rather, she would if Natsuki and Sayori would stop their incessant bickering (“Whatever, stupid!” Natsuki screams a little too loud. Sayori retorts. “Why’re you calling me stupid? Can you stop fighting now, please? I just wanted to read with Yuri today is all.”) How endearing of Natsuki to defend the corpse of Yuri’s affection she so desperately clings to— it almost warrants a pitying.

A clopping —with rhythm akin to that of Yuri’s nails on her book, as if it were a precedent— catches Yuri’s ear. Raising the handle of her blade (what did she take today? A Karambit, switchbl— wait. Focus.), she grazes Monika’s hair as she quickly pivots to the other side of the door, somehow taking the aforementioned unease with her as if she were turning a barrier as a door. Covering her victim’s mouth, Yuri arouses her lips into just such a copious smile that one would have trouble discerning its traits of beauty from those of derangement.

‘Shhh….” Yuri giggles, releasing a sedative liquid across the cut —no bigger than one from paper— on Monika’s neck. “There.” Yuri places a kiss on Monika’s upper-lip, sucking seductively. “Now we can sleep soundly, see?” Monika only flails her forearms before succumbing to the nitrous now coursing through her, as if she were encased in a sugar coma, being as susceptible to whipped topping as Natsuki— that was just… a kiss, right? Yuri thus drags Monika down the hall, humming —somehow without alerting the other two young girls, likely due to the continued elevation of their decibel count— a tune with an insanity lost in its reverberations through the desolate corridors of her school building. Yuri, though titters and exhales, inquires to the intoxicated Monika. “I wonder if we could stand to get you some tea before… well, I won’t ruin the surprise,” a chuckle leaving a smile heard clearly in her tone, “that would detract from my enjoyment.”


	2. Ellipsis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Monika "writes" a poem

Finding herself inches from a single unlit candle contrasting the array of stalks imbued with dancing glows reminiscent of a twisted initiator elsewhere in the room, Monika glances at the wine glass —a smudge on it’s upper curvature, the collective glow wrapping the blemish in a thin photic (is it mold?) film— on the table beside her with room for little else but it and the aforementioned candle. The wine glass, the particular shape of Yuri’s bosom reflected within its form, is displaced with the force of what is surely her voluptuous breasts— a dent is left in her womanly facade.

Breathing is heard, followed by a ticking, and a delayed scraping near the wall. The pattern, it’s almost methodical. Tick… scrape, tick… scrape, —slightly closer now— tick… scrape…. The pattern stops abruptly, along with the breaths, leaving her alone with the candle. All light vanishes from the room.

“What… what is this?” The chest-like chalice glows with a scintillating aura, its light twinkling on the tears in Monika’s eyes. “It's so pretty. So, so… pretty….”

 

The doubtful thoughts,

Forgetful thoughts

The rain won’t wash away.

My valiance, e’er present;

A stoic valiance, sought

To run against the day.

 

Ellipsing winds

Deliberate;

Though, thoughts get whisked away.

Storm now with unclear state,

It wraps me in dismay.

 

The poem found its way through the storm of the girl’s misty consciousness, undisturbed by the sea of worry engulfing her now. She wished she had the strength or means to write it down. She thought it was nice, anyway. A stark contrast to the unstable mental state she had slipped into, the only critique she could give was that it ended… slipped through the hands of her psyche like a ghastly marriage. Why couldn’t she write like that, letting her pen flow without worry… fear of judgement?

Sweeping, clear as a pond one might skip rocks over, made the sound of felt against tar. Monika’s mind raced, ripples of conceptual misunderstanding ricocheted throughout her mind, but she could know she was thinking, know what she thought.

A hard thwack; Monika’s head began to throb, and she began to drift tentatively towards unconsciousness…. She swore she could hear someone… just before falling into the frantic abyss of her dreams… they said… happy.

“Happy thoughts. Only happy thoughts.” the voice began sobbing. “I just (a hiccup) need to be happy. Oh—.”

Monika dropped her arm, involutarly flopping it against the side of her bed— as if something pushed it. She now lay unmoving beneath the weight of her concussed mind’s surrender to the embrace of somatic subjugation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note: Written in about 2 hours with severe writer's block. But, I solved the issue giving me trouble in this chapter. So, sorry for the short (and sporadic) read this time. Chapter three will be better.


	3. Pens And Pink

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pun intended.

Sayori lay cradled in thin wisps against the wall— an illusion of comfort sweeping around her. With the rope, worn and prickly, she had clutched in her hand, broken so often that it seemed odd for it to be knotted into a functioning wisp, scathing her palms.

“I wonder if…. Yes, that must be right!” She started towards the desk with a gallup. The drawer was ajar.

Pulling it, Sayori lengthened her perking lips, finding the pen and paper she wanted still tucked in the corner, serving as the rope’s replacement. She slid it to her, pulling the paper up so the pen half-rolled, and daintily unfolded the sheet. Popping off the pen cap, she began to write.

_Monica, there’s something I wanted to tell you. Nothing bad, it’s just a silly story. Anyway, I wanted to tell you about my favorite person in the whole world. You’re a good friend, so I thought you wouldn’t mind. But, you wouldn’t be reading this unless you wanted to anyway, right? So, I guess it’s okay then. I guess it’s just I thought there might be something you’d like about it, but it’s not very good. So anyway, here it goes: My favorite person._

The letter ended there. With the one exception being the blot of ink on the page where she held the pen as she was thinking. She couldn’t write now, she became tired, as if each line was marithonic in length. She was so tired, in fact, that she would never fully recover enough to write on that paper. She still wrote, of course. The paper she would write on wasn’t important; she needed the story to be written, that was all.

She did write again, quite successfully, in fact. Writing about this favorite person, this object of desire, a pygmalion of yearning— it was like a kind of demon. Not the story, the person who the story was about. Though, was that really different…? If Sayori could write for hours on end about her fantasies consisting of things, some imaginative, idealistic, and, well fantastical —childish things, really— like their hands intertwining, then a float into the abyss, a cold unthinking darkness, but also intense things sometimes… whirling, like a storm, a tangent… was that the same? Writing about a storms’ embrace, a Lovecraftian sort of depth, merkieness to her authentic flow when she began to write, it would whisk her away…. But, was it the same? The same things that made her love to write, even just to think about them, was that the same as her confusion— her bane?

A lifelong dedication to, not this person, the letter about this person would drive Sayori into unrelenting madness— she wanted to write, but it would always end the same: no end, no goal, she would just write. It angered her. Like the swirling, dancing, bobbing concepts in her mind —oscillating candle flames illuminating realms beyond the reaches of her consciousness she dared not venture within— were purposely alluding her. She couldn’t get the words right… not correct, the order was improper… an ongoing dialogue in which she never had complete sentience from it—them—they who…. The one who initiated her descent into madness, the very person upon whom she was showering affection, was the sole hindrance to Sayori’s goal, her only goal which was, of course, to write her story.

 

On the eve of Easter Sunday, Sayori noticed the glow of the sun reflecting off the glittery frills of Natsuki’s skirt. Sayori hadn’t seen her since school let out that year, as they had very little time with their now corporate ways of life filling their schedules with the literal lifeblood of their energy previously focused solely on their friendship, their happiness, and their writing.

“Natsuki!” Sayori cupped her hands in the hopes the vocalization would be strengthened by her gesture.

Sayori braced herself putting her arms in a vertically giddy position, that classic schoolgirl pose flicking her would-be skirt, now a lab coat, outward, her books lying half open on the ground. She just hoped for a soft landing. Here comes the jump.

Natsuki arched exuberantly, her hop ending surprisingly late for her usual elongated cavorting. At least Sayori could remain on her feet. Hugging Sayori, she dysplayed her teeth with a smile, giggling happly. Expecting a defensive clash with a fist or elbow, she puffed out her chest, its left side receiving the elbowing she had anticipated, prompting a yelp.

Stumbling backwards apologetically, Sayori rubbed her side sheepishly and spoke, “Sorry. Are you okay? Here, let me help you.”

“No, no. I’m okay, really.” Natsuki began rising from her hunched position. “Come hug me.” She outstretched her arms, leaning back slightly.

The two embraced, Sayori replaying the various other endorphin baths in which they had shrouded their longing for one another. It felt so familiar, natural for her to engage in a display so vague in relational implications publicly, nobody really seemed to mind— it was just how they always did things.

After releasing her, Sayori gave a tilt of the head and an eye-closing smile. She moved her hand towards Natsuki before speaking more abruptly then she meant to: “So, what’s— that outfit looks new, I mean.”

“Yeah,” Natsuki interjected, “I’m in the working world now. Can’t say I enjoy it as much as I’d like, but it’s work, nonetheless. I’d love to chat though, if you have the time. Walk to the bus with me?”

“Sure, let’s.” Sayori spoke with her friend as they meandered their way into the sidewalk just before their departure. Inevitably the goodbye came and went, just as they would. But not before several expositional discussions through which Sayori learned of Natsuki’s plan to fly to America with her uncle; she had a plane ticket and would begin packing next Wednesday.

 

For what seemed the millionth time that day, Sayori sat at her desk attempting to write, her lack of a utensil being what hindered her from doing so the most, yet here she was. A paper rested on the desk separated from the cluttered abyss that was her own post-secondary aspiration manifesting only in the piles of books, crumpled notebooks, and pen caps which she thought were lost, merely shrouded in the darkness of her arboreal graveyard. Additionally, was the stack of school books Sayori kept only out of a lack of necessity for their absence; perhaps she would let go of them some day when she was older and more detached.

A sigh echoes off the walls of her studio apartment as Sayori takes her foot and kicks the trash can away from its usual post at her bedside without intention as she begins muttering to herself about how, even with the accidental nature of the inconvenience,“I guess I could be more careful next time.” She grunted as she hobbled over to the empty bin and put its various contents, all thankfully dry, inside of it once again.

Walking back to her table, there was a flash in Sayori’s mind of a swing set covered in a thin haze graying the image —an already unimaginative visual, of course— so that she quickly darted her thoughts back to mindful observation. She struggled to do so, dwelling on thoughts, flashes in her mind, of a color she had seen earlier that day; a bright, familiar crimson washed with age, or perhaps whiskey.

“I don’t even like pink,” she muttered, “why do I…?”

Her thoughts swirled and danced to the image of Natsuki, fang peeping, as she grinned at nothing in particular. Then, she vanished, as did the contents of Sayori’s previously taught tear ducts. She began to sniffle, mourning her friend who would most likely never skip with such a cutesy joy with her again.


	4. Binding

Sharp beeping punctures the air as the smells of a bakery waft through Natsuki’s kitchen, the cupcakes she was baking now complete. Clopping across the tinted linoleum floor, Natsuki, apron fluttering to inspect her treats in a manner that seems too rushed for the importance of them, finds herself tripping over her laces, a bruising thud resulting. Her head, now found to be growing a bulbous protrusion, throbbed with echos of its recent impact, but it was paid minimal attention. She had to get to those cupcakes. Right?

Making her way to the kitchen, palm rested just above her eyebrow, a lightheaded stumble causes her to again fall this time into a chair, miraculously, on her rump. Natsuki winces as she will undoubtedly do again that night, her instability her hindrance, the stool her cold, unfeeling reality. The hand who’s will to which she bends will initiate her descent into ceaseless, repetitive, developmental stunting. This was, is, and always would be her spiraling reality filled with steaming, boiling adversity which she was meant, by her own volition or otherwise, to face without as much as a hand for her to extend outward in search of refuge. Everyone was cold, and so too she seemed fated to become an unfeeling, brash shell of herself unable to continue as her persona would have her seem— bubbly yet passionate, a source of sweets as well as laughter.

As a light illuminating the road, two of them she could see now in the dancing white sky, drew closer, her breath began to quicken, with each passing second bringing a continually rapid shortness to her breath; it emulated the outside of her door. Papa would be home soon, and that meant more than just her cupcakes might not see the sun rise.

  _Goddamnit, you bitch. Again with those fucking cupcakes. Fuck! Is that my china you used? Natsuki? Papa’s getting mad. Maybe you’d like to lose your household privileges, then._

Her father’s words pierced her mind as the memories of her various camping trips illuminated (irregularly) by porch light the small “welcome” mat her only blanket, —with street mutts as her only trusted companions licking her violet bruises as they nuzzled her and, often without warning, would bounce their tails on the rotting porch boards— caused her jaw to move with what she assumed was the determination she always needed and always had. She just knew she had it when papa was around and, she assumed, even when he wasn’t.

A car door slammed. Footprints crunching in the snow soon followed as slurred exclamations faded in and out from the wind’s breath. Their tension loomed closer to the door as the intoxicated screams sucked at the homey feel in the kitchen. The moment was gone, and Natsuki felt helpless wanting only to grasp at it, postpone its departure as it fled. Her only happiness was just as her tough persona: a fleeting ghost of pure façade culminating in nothing but wishful attempts at continuing her enigmatic dream of escape as it crumbled. The biting truth underpinning her every moment now was a gnawing realization that she had failed to continue this act, this playwright she attempted to make her very existence without so much as a definitive final scene. Yet wholly surrounding her, lacking a customary final bow for its actors before being pushed aside by whatever change in scenery Natsuki fell victim too, was every prop she had ever used in its execution, all the little setpieces in her elaborate pavlovian maze of social confinement she constructed for what she had assumed —whether correctly so had been presently, and initially, irrelevant to her— was her protection, physical, mental, as well as for her veneer to which she obsessively clung. Her fervor never died even as her dream, unbeknown to her, did— now she had to set the stage again.

She began to lift herself and frantically turned off the oven before bounding into bed, her shivers creasing the blanket as she fidgeted nervously with her sheets before she stopped at the slow creaking coming from the front door. Papa was home, and he was as unsteady as Natsuki was previously, likely much more so.

“Natsuki?” A gruff utterance filled the front room. A left turn was the only twist the surly drunk could seem to manage before stumbling onto his hands. “Fucking Christ! My wrist.” A thump vibrated the floorboards.

Natsuki wrapped herself in her blanket and shut her eyes. Tighter and tighter she attempted to push them together, but their only response was to push out tears. That was the reason, she knew it, was sure of it. Papa was hurt, but she didn’t care; she couldn’t care. All she wanted was for sleep to overtake her even with as wishful as that thought was. She couldn’t escape; that world, that elusive hope for which she frantically grasped, was gone now. She began, quietly, to cry.

Nastuki’s father lifted himself off the floor his nose now bleeding, wrist throbbing, clicking with each new motion. Stumbling to the kitchen, he caught a whiff of lemon batter before turning to the fridge under the assumption that it held the scent’s source. As such, he preceded to move his hand, now well-versed in tap dance routine, in the direction of the plastic-coated handle, its frailty of no concern to him as he hoisted himself upright from his one of his intermittent, involuntary slouches.

“Bakin’,” he muttered. “Of all the things she coulda done, she chosed ta do mothafuckin’ baking. Cunt.” A little louder now, “Make the Thanksgivin’ dinner while you’re at it, eh?” He swung open the fridge door to find what he was sure, even in his optical state of double-vision, was nothing more than the container of ham placed there earlier now rotten due to lack of temperature control. Hadn’t that been thrown out already? Natsuki, she was so ungrateful that she couldn’t even throw out the old meat. Wait, where was— “Natsuki!” Her father bellowed the girl’s name in his usual outdoor voice. He made his way up the stairs to her room, shoes clopping against the bare hardwood. 

Natsuki’s heart clenched as dread filled her very being now. It became all she was, all she knew. Intimate in its closeness to her perking breasts as it nuzzled her essence with its spindly tendrils around her, she became overtaken by its branched weaving. The feeling writhed inside of her as it continued to branch out from—

_Bang. Bang. Bang. Bangbangbangbang…. Thud!_

Then silence as the feeling uncoiled from Natsuki’s torso. She was safe, somehow. She dared not move to test it.

So, she didn’t. She sat in the silence, let it engulf her, surround her, deafen her like the empty applause of her now dissipated audience always had before as they looked on in amazement at just how good she was, how she was able to keep it together. Even with how obvious it was to them, Natsuki didn’t find it obvious that they knew her play was only an elaborate ploy of thespian puppetry. Her success meant nothing because she was alone. It meant nothing because it was her, and only her. Nobody could enjoy it with her, that would be surrender, she supposed. But she was still happy. She was always just happy enough. She was perfectly fine, she swore.

Natsuki began to cry. She only cried a little to start, then she hiccuped some. Before long sobs, ear bursting wails reverberated out through her throat. Voice cracks were only a symptom of her continuous, saddened exhales. The level of noise each generated seemed impossible for a human being, size being a meaningless variable, to create, let alone such a petite girl. As Natsuki continued, her sobs turned into screams. A thick, almost pus like liquid began dripping from Natsuki’s vocal chords as she felt her now burst eardrums follow suit.

“Why! Why-y-y-y-y!” Natsuki continued her wailing as she spoke to her pillow as if she had forgotten that it wasn’t a person, not that she gave it the personal space it should have received even if it was.

Her crying continued until sunrise when she finally, whether by exhaustion or bodily insistence, succumbed to the silence she had separated from. It ate her again as she slept through the sunrise. The day saw nothing of her, and neither did she. Its cosmic balance forcing the world to continue moving endlessly around her, with her, through her. Encased in the daylight, she slumbered until the next rotation of her limp, seemingly lifeless, empty body pulled her with a thud into the day’s last few moments. She gazed out the window in disbelief. Was it already Sunday?

She hoisted herself up and trotted down the stairs to find papa on a blood stained floor. The faint smell of copper eliminated from his skull which had a matted patch of hair with dried blood, and most of the red puddle, surrounding it. Natsuki stood in shock briefly before rushing for the bandages.

( _Aren’t you getting what you wanted?_ )

Natsuki stopped before tilting her head. She giggled at the scene before her. “What am I doing? I have cupcakes that’ll get cold soon.” Natsuki spun towards the kitchen and hummed to herself cheerily. She had to get to those cupcakes.

__

( _Right._ )

__


	5. Elipsing Passage

The next day, Natsuki made her way to the clubroom after her classes. She found Sayori sitting quietly against a chair with a pen, dented and glistening, against the collar of her shirt. The sunlight shone against her face in an odd contrast to the surrounding desks— it almost seemed to highlight her.

A light buzzed above Natsuki’s head before a flicker and a drone accompanied the collection of light sounds and sounds of light bobbing through the room. There were people talking; shoes clopping; tea brewing; a collective group of boys all snickering, scoffing at something around the corner; and, of course, Sayori who was sitting uncomfortably against a wall despite the myriad of desks all clumped together vacantly. The wind was blowing, also.

“Let’s see. Take the X and divide by three… three and two-thirds X is (chewing) twenty-six, and then… oh….” She continued there chewing and muttering to herself in slight confusion while Natsuki peered at her. Neither one had noticed the lights when they had begun to malfunction as they had stopped now. This was a rare sight for Natsuki: seeing Sayori so diligent in her studies when she could barely keep herself together in the clubroom, or the meetings, at least. “I can’t ever get this right.” Sayori then puts her pen down on the table, her eyes still fixated on the paper she had written on; it was filled with scribbles and dents where ink reflected light, almost scintillating in its photonic ping-pong game.

Walking over to the windowsill where Sayori was curled up and sitting in an adjacent bean bag chair, Natsuki watches Sayori as she tilts back somehow without seeming any less invested in her algebra homework, Natsuki begins straightening her ribbons before puffing her cheeks and preparing to speak a little too fast.

“Whatchadoin’?” Natsuki utters curiously as she bends and extends her arms behind her back. A swish of her tongue before speaking again, Natsuki forgets to breathe when saying, “Sayori, are you okay?” A pause as Natsuki moved closer. “Seeing you working is like seeing,” a puff of air and inhale, “seeing someone you never thought could read reciting Shakespeare or something. All this time I thought you just sat on your phone or stared off thinking to yourself. What’s with you today?” But Sayori gives no response as she pats her pen against her chin before writing again, furrowing her brow.

Natsuki shoots upright as she realizes what she just accused her friend of being. But she didn’t think Sayori knew that was why. That funny little assumption one makes that causes everything to seem fine even when there’s no real evidence confirming it. And then your assumptions are ridiculed in an even more subtle and passive-aggressive way then the behavior which caused the one doing the action in the first place to continue without giving their actions a second thought making it nearly impossible to single out the behavior in the first place and, of course, leaving it up to the same flawed judgement of the now emotionally invested individual who must endure this whirling ship in the sea of continued paranoia that could all be solved by some socially acceptable avenue to discuss these anxious thoughts. A way to somehow drain the pool of murky, uninviting waters flooding the everyday lives of people everywhere without making them feel odd or awkward for having what seems to them like thoughts worth being called stupid, unintelligent, ignorant. It makes them, without even being called any of it by the person at the center of this pool of thought, feel that way, too, and Natsuki accepted that she knew it— an ignorant bitch she was.

 _Cunt. Don’t talk back to me. Disgusting. Make the Thanksgivin’ dinner while you’re at it, eh? Worthless. Gross. You deserve this._ Piece _of shit._

Now Monika and Yuri are setting up around the room in anticipation for the club’s beginning. They haven’t noticed either of the other girls until Sayori huffs and gives a hello, prompting Monika to turn and look at Yuri. Yuri glances at the window, bashfully wincing.

A tight wind had been swerving around the school building that had now begun to thicken. It had been growing for some time, but now, for the first time Natsuki knew, it was audible. Even if it had been there forever, she did not acknowledge it until now when it sped, whipped, lapped at the window frame like a starving dog. It craved, had been for some time now, a thing Natsuki had no knowledge could be given to it, or that she had been doing so. She fed and fed and fed the wind until there was nothing left for it to eat, and still then, unrelentingly so, it craved more.

_Of all the things she coulda done, she chosed ta do mothafuckin’ baking._

A clattering is heard, and Yuri —now fully aware of the transgressions pertaining to Natsuki and her interest in ridiculing Sayori’s algebraic endeavors, Natsuki was sure— began to prepare tea. She noisily obtained the tea bags stuffed behind a tower of dishes the teacher had placed there and kept them, somehow in their wobbling balance, in their original shape as she removed her hips from the countertop without so much as a pause, gracefully lifting herself off the marble ledge as she swept across the room to the teapot sitting on the stove. It was a walk Yuri seemed to have practiced, almost as if she meant to keep an the attention of an onlooker. It was as distracting a walk as she could muster; she just kept swinging, swinging, swinging up and down. Methodical in her gyration, the hips of this plump set of thighs could have caused an earthquake. Bulbous and glistening, her glutes began to scintillate as they danced in a ying-yang motion barely noticeable— but Natsuki noticed. The feelings she had were oddly comforting while marveling at this girl as she moved, but Natsuki quickly dismissed them as she was scared as to what they may imply. A hypnotic set of hips, a torso for the ages, thighs you could serve on a plate, and, not to mention, waving hair glistening as her buttox. Clearly, something was different today, Natsuki could tell, when Yuri’s legs started moving, calves flexing with the extension of her knees.

Yuri was beautiful, sexy even, as she flicked her hair to account for her movements to the various kitchen appliances she used in the arduously steep creation she had begun. Her hands moved so delicately when she gripped the teapot with her dainty fingers. First the index, then the middle, and the ring and pinky together comprised the final motions on her palm’s journey. It was incredibly tantalizing to watch her move. Every gesture was like a mesmerizing ribbon dancer flicking her cloth in dips and twists. Their legs, so long and limber, snapping as Yuri’s heels —glistening as her rump— on the schoolroom floor.

Suddenly Natsuki realized she was staring. Recoiling her head so that it swiveled to face Monika, she struck up a conversation.

“So,” (A little too loud, so keep it down, you idiot.) “you must be ready to start, no?” So stupid, she was so stupid. Of course they weren’t ready, Yuri had just started her tea; what was she thinking? Just find a way out. Now. Shit, she’s talking. Listen. Listen. Listen, you idiot. Listen to her. Now it’s your turn. Nonono. Say something, now!

“Natsuki?” Monica blinks vacantly.

“Oh, oh. Sorry. I kinda blanked right at the end there. What was that?” She was being so rude. Natsuki felt so ashamed when doing that. She wanted someone to make the feeling stop; it prickled at her chest. But Natsuki listened to Monika more intently this time. Once Natsuki saw her mouth was open, she knew it was time to listen.

“What are you doing here so early, Natsuki?” Monika gave a smile as she tilted her head. She was being so calm and non-judgemental. What it was that let her do this nobody really knew, or at least said it aloud. Not even Monika herself really knew, even thought that anyone thought she knew, or thought that she was. This notion of Monika’s kindness existed purely in the heads of those around her, but not her own. Did that make her a different person than she thought she was? Could she, despite what others had thought of her, achieve something without the help of those involved? Obviously, her limits existed, but where did they come from and what were they, where did they lie? What even was the proper definition of the word “boundary” as it applied to her? Or what about other people— Just boundaries in general? Did they even exist if undefined, or was this just a point of self-imposed ignorance upon the human condition? Is this part of anything beyond itself once we define it, the notion of limits? Did limits have limits? Does everything have a limit, including (but not limited to) limits? What—

Blurting, Natsuki finally musters what words she would say. “I’m just being studious like Sayori here.” Why bring that up? Monika knew about the unintentional insult Natsuki made, after all. She didn’t need to be reminded of it.

Sayori finally looks up from her homework, still sitting down. “Hey, guys. How’re you all doing today? I didn’t miss anything important, right? Please tell me you all weren’t waiting too long for me.

“No, not at all.” Suddenly speaking for everyone now, Monika reassures Sayori of her innocence. “We just were coming in as you were finishing.” She did it to make up for what Natsuki had said, probably. The reassuring, and all that. Natsuki was certainly sure of it now.

“Okay! That makes me happy. So what are we going to do today?” Sayori, standing, smiles at the room in front of her.

Monika wags some paper by its corners, taking a gust of breath before speaking. “Today we are going to write some poems. I brought paper, so all you need is pens. Got it?” She moves around the desks, turning at the corner of one so her leg brushes it, and hands out the papers to her fellow club members. She’s looking at each one as she passes them. First Natsuki, then Sayori, then Yuri, and Monika seats herself down at last.

Yuri looks at her paper with pen in hand, clicking methodically. Click… stop, click… stop, click… stop…. And so continues the clicking as Yuri listens intently. Her mind must have been swirling like the steam wafting from the top of her mug. The thoughts of this girl were like a clock timed perfectly in sync with her pen as it wrote. Tickscrape. Tickscrape. Tickscrape. Her pen-clock was moving now, the tick-tock of her pen smothering the room in sound as it marked her paper. Marking, scraping, ticking, clicking sounds, Yuri wrote fervently on the sea of white in front of her. Her inky boat creasing the waters making waves that were permanent in their shape, form, location. Marks branched and connected as they came around to meet one another and bring Yuri’s paper to life. The pen moved, but the ink didn’t.

( _Methodical._ )

Across the page, the pen went down and slipped into the edge. Zigs and zags, they bound around while dancing on the page. Skipping, jumping the pen went on its way, and it had found, without a doubt, the sheet had ended on its way.

_What?_

 

Yes, she had done it. Perhaps only for a brief moment, but she had done it. After trying for so long to gift this world she’d made, she managed to reach someone and take them on a tour, however fleeting, of her bouncing, rolling, endless ride she had crafted for so long. Crafted in the hope that she could share it with someone she cared for one day; and now, she finally did just that. It felt so real, so true to her in her grasp. This shared moment, its time dedicated to this one person’s chance to experience her world, and she theirs, for even a second while she made the most vibrant wishes and exemplars within her personal haven, was the highlight —no, the very purpose now— of this, her poetic creation— and she wanted, had, needed, to share it more. What a world it was, and she loved it.

This world began as a cold and desolate plane— dry, with little rhythm or beauty in its manifesting consciousness. An ever-moving mass of cracks and whirling sands on it surface, with a sky browned by the reflecting soot placed in sprinkled patches on the less chipped swaths of crumbled land there. It had a cloud of vermillion mist thinly stretched across the bottom layer of fog that was just touching the ground, light as a feather, before sporadically shifting this way and that with the winds of the sky above. Sometimes the mist and the sands would mix in a flurry of indistinguishable hatred red that, if you squinted at hard enough, you could swear there was more to it, as no wind could whip a storm so furious yet so bland, colorless in its variety; that would hurt too much the collective wills of the winds. The cracks piled with dust, blood red in their hues littering the ground which the wind, with its various stormy gusts, had forced to settle there to the dismay of no one, not even the cracks.

These cracks would go on to be filled with the sands placed by the breezes and shuffling balls within this land’s center, caking into the holes before, much as a sponge, the black vacancies on the surface were padded in red. Pulseless veins now lived where nothing had since this world’s start. Nobody saw it, nobody cared for it, this world with its many seams and rips, the tears that would go untreated for however long they had been in the first place were now given a proper breath of examination by the wind, timeless and free, the wind was unrestrained. So they would play, the canyons, toy with those who entered the nameless land

Such was the fate of all who entered this land of barren, veinless ground; whipping winds; flightless, black soot; and the equivalent of a tornado’s bully of storm-blown, colored, colorless, black-destroying, artery-creating sands. Few had walked this soil’s lifeless husk of a surface. They would become lost in its gripping breath of innumerable particles of eroded rock as their bodies succumbed to the splitting headache that was their treacherous journey— the one they chose, they walked, and, therefore, they ended.

But now there was a lifeblood which had been given to this land. It was lush with plants. Plants, as much as they could, and animals played there, and they ruled their thriving kingdom as children: free and joyous. Twisted creations of her mind that danced and played just as the wind had before its construction of the pulsing tendons which twitched with each new piece of life, every cell created, every organism birthed. They were all hers, and she theirs. They would frolic together, spin and sing in the meadows that were now scattered within this world of theirs— it was theirs, after all. This is what she created, and it was beautiful.

Blades of grass, shifting uniformly in the consistently soft breeze, danced in what was, with some of the most vibrant shrubs populating the less lush areas, a meadow filled with flowers and animals all scurrying along looking, with great success, for that which there was, much to their enjoyment, a bountiful amount; there was food of all sorts, a myriad of morsels— carrots, mushrooms, acorns, fruit of any variety, and, because there was no death to the creatures here, watermelon which granted perhaps the greatest joy of everlasting life.

Life there had been peaceful and carefree, but she wished for more. The lack of a companion left her yearning for someone to share this world with beyond the animals who, though she would never say this aloud, did not seem like animals at all. Sure, it was nice to have them there, but they just didn’t seem quite right. Not in a bad way, they just weren’t to her taste. So, she searched for more of her own to join her. Yet, after looking and looking, she found nothing that seemed even remotely like what she wanted. So, being that this was the first time the garden, as she had chosen to call it, did not provide her with that which she yearned for, she ignored her wants and kept on playing, frolicking there with the animals and all the garden had given them. She couldn’t help but wish for her companion, though and, from time to time, she would walk in search of them, whether she said so aloud did not matter, before returning home, each time more defeated then the last. She hated the world now. It was no longer her safe haven, but a place of imprisonment for her to simply smile and laugh in as the creation around her —the ground, sky, venous cracks, the animals, plants, and what were once lively winds now settled into a breeze— pulsed with life. She was no longer happy here— she wanted to leave, but she was trapped, by her own ambitious desires, to stay in this place now. Make your bed and lie in it, as they say. Except that, in her case, nobody had said it; that was the issue.

Her disdain for this world grew into worry. She worried about the animals’ safety because of their odd appearance, about them being offended if she brought it up, and about her own wish to be discovered somehow. The animals clearly knew, even though she had said nothing of it, that she was not happy here. Just listen to how they chattered among themselves, looking at her as they did so. Clearly, they had conspired against her. So now she had to find a way to get what she wanted, as she was sure of the animals’ unwillingness to help her.

She began to think.

 

Natsuki looks up as she realizes that her mind has been adrift for so long that she hasn’t begun to write. Yuri was so distracting sometimes. Speaking of, what time was it? She looked at the clock, not needing to move her head much, and saw the clock read 3:47, only two minutes since the club meeting officially started.

Before it even seemed like she had blinked, the meeting was over and Natsuki was just packing up. She shoved her prosaic project into her bookbag and started off to her home. She waved goodbye to Monika and Yuri and gave Sayori a guilty glance before nodding with a plastered smile. She had heard, Natsuki was sure, the insulting comments she had made.

Shaking her head, Natsuki continued on out the door before a cough caught her attention. She turned to face its source and found Yuri standing there, a slight blush on her face.

“Um…. I-I saw you looking at me today.”

Shit. She knew about that. Natsuki couldn’t hide anything from anyone, could she? She took a sharp breath in. “Yeah? Well, you don’t have to tell me about it or anything, dummy!”

“Well, y-you see,” Yuri hides her blushing face, “I wanted to ask you what it was that motivated you to do that. It was a long time that you did it, and I—”

Natsuki blurts out her answer, her face turning a shade to match her hair. “Because you’re nice.” It was as neutral an answer she could give while still being truthful. As truthful as she could manage, at least.

“Oh…. W-well I think t-that you're, um, nice, too.” Yuri was so close— but to what, she did not, or care to, know. It was the first step to obtaining her personal bravery.

They would keep talking to one another about their feelings. Topics would change from those pertaining to their thoughts of one another, of course— but the catharsis of their dialogues spanning a timeless collection of days, nights, cups of afternoon tea, and sleep-ridden visits, one of them —eventually to be many— ending with them nude against one another as they slept, would be where they would yearn, lust to be whenever seeing one another. What did we do last night, they would whisper and one would respond with that she did not know, but she loved it; she would wish to do it again. So, not wanting to disappoint the other, they would continue the daily grind of what was initially bound to the star-filled skies of their adolescent reservoirs of contained sexual promiscuity. Because it was contained, or perhaps when it wasn’t, the girls saw it as a harmless exploration of their humanity, free, and even predestined, as a gateway to adulthood. Sex for them was a process, not an activity motivated by lust, to come into their own. Not that it wasn’t fun, it was just not the reason they started it, they swore. Yuri got something from it, Natsuki did, too. So, it was okay to keep sneaking into and out of one another’s windows as they had dreamed of doing, they both knew now since they were first reading together in the clubroom that first day of the year because, for themselves alone and together, they were happy.


	6. Good Girl, Pretty Girl

Smoke rose from the sticks of tobacco near to almost everyone’s face in that place, surrounding a crowded air of discussion of the day’s trials in a veil of ghastly vapors. Faded red seats were lined beneath the lip of the bar, pressed down by the continued seating of the usual patrons of this dump of a bar. The counters were chipped and the radio was broken, as was the microphone which the owners had been meaning to fix three years since Monday.

The tattered and broken aesthetic was a contrast to Natsuki —Sukuu, as  she was now known— and her pink hair and sparkling skirt she had obtained from some thrift store in California was what she told people— she sat shifting in the back of the room, watching intently beneath her flopping hat. Scanning around the room, she kept her drink so it was covering her nose, the smell of rum wafting into her nostrils as she sipped slowly from the glass’ lips with the set of her own agents of vocal manipulation. She gazed with her orbs, now an artificial shade of brown, on the myriad of characters before her: a man in a denim jacket and leather pants, a hat lined with jewels which were more than likely fake competing his outfit, spoke with a woman in a low-cut shirt, promiscuous heels and a skirt which demanded that she be fucked, in his opinion; a bald gentlemen, who the man in denim would probably refer to as grandpa, sagged with his gin and tonic on the chair on the center table where a game of what looked like poker was taking his money for the god only knows-eth time; a suited individual sitting at the table beside denim’s grandpa, his hand exposed to the others, was a slightly slouched man leaning over to speak to someone who Natsuki could only tell also was slouching by the position of his face relative to his shoulders; and the bartender who spoke with an accent slightly sothern in origin, hair neatly parted, and hands which matched the colorless rag he used to clean the glasses of those who were too obstructed for Natsuki to accurately depict with her eyes— those physical or mental. She kept looking at them all busily moving beyond her window of the world which she inhabited in this hole-in-the-wall pub that was all of two weeks from shutting down, as she hid herself for what she made out to be reasons of secrecy.

That excuse, which it of course was, served as a cover for her state as a member of her city’s population of promiscuous girls. She was a slut, selling her petite body to creeps who liked the sort of girl hardly larger than their fourteen-year-old children who, after scarcely having a glimmer of parental guidance before needing to be one themselves without so much as a daycare to ensure their safety, were in much the same situation as she with these “clients” of her, no doubt; some were even in the same city, seeing as there was one passing the pub’s murky windows now.

She began her trek home, three blocks from the hotel she had escorted to, and Julia Starr, as her tramp stamp labeled her, was walking with a limp from her missing kidney’s recent consentless surgical removal by, she assumed, a slightly more than under qualified client. She passed a man who knew her through a friend, he had said, and was willing to pay a hefty chunka cash for a ride or three. So, being that she was never really, truly, off work, she obliged under the pretence of the rent’s recent increase being paid off with the work of a single client. Little did she know, the man was looking to pay his own bills, and was willing to do so at any cost.

“What, you think you deserve some kind of reward for being my cock sleeve for all of twenty-two minutes?” he would say later that night. It was more like just two, but the man didn’t care. He had gotten his fill of Julia for that night, and that was all that mattered. Julia threw, screamed, bit, slapped, scratched, and swore, but it did not matter. Expletives or no, he was getting his way. Would have his way with her many times, actually. Sometimes he’d come as a trans man, others in drag— fishy, mostly. Other times it was his sheer insistence that led to her getting screwed. Before she could notice, he would fuck her brains out and leave with nothing but the memory of her degradation for the girl —once an honors student, now a whore she would tell her kids one day as they huddled beneath the big “Homeless Shelter” sign, worn with age and lack of upkeep— to hold on to as she sat there wallowing in her choice, her bedless bed, which she had made herself; no pillows, no sheets, no blankets, and it was all hers, thanks to that man. 

It was her fault for being so trusting, even though you had to be in this business. She was told to never trust anyone, but she still trusted herself. Was she not supposed to trust people, even herself and what she knew to be true, when they said that a candy bar was a dollar-fifty, or when they said the bathroom was around the corner? What was the cutoff for who was trustworthy with these novel things, and who was not. For all she knew, the bathroom informant was a liar and had prepared a trap for any young girls such as herself to be snached away and sold into slavery, not that she wasn’t there already anyway.

It’s just that she had to trust some people sometimes, right? Not everyone was this monster she perceived them as: something to be suspicious of; that couldn’t be right. But, seeing as she had no alternative, she accepted this piece of advice she was given by an entity who she couldn’t remember and went on her way, though still skeptical of the claim when she encountered a scenario which called for her to adhere to its teachings beyond what she was accustomed to. No matter how truthful that thing was that implanted this principle into her head so long ago was, he fell victim to contradictory logic, and that raised a plethora of other questions.

Where did she go wrong, Natsuki thought, to cause her to be in a position where she identified with that girl on a level beyond their shared genitalia? As she pondered, images of flashing lights, a bottle of milk, and faces she could hardly picture were running through her mind before vanishing. She realized there was no coherence to them in her drunken amnesia.

A voice called out to her from the depths of her mind, and she took it to be that of a girl. She liked girls. Why couldn’t girls like her as they had before? Before that one day.

  
  


Birds were chirping outside their window as Yuri began to stir. The blankets had cocooned her and her lover who’s flowingly jaggad hair peeked out above the cleavage of Yuri’s shirtless breasts. It ballooned like cotton candy in the glow of the sunlight peeking through the window. Their faces were berated by that light as Natsuki nuzzled into her companion’s torso.

A hum vibrates Yuri’s breasts before Natsuki spoke something indistinguishable, which Yuri hummed to in response. It was disingenuous, but no one would have minded if she responded after truthful consideration either. It was just one of those things you did to be courteous to those whose face you were enveloping in your naked flesh. It was probably just a hum in the first place, Yuri would never know quite what it was. 

Lying naked, they began to talk about the night previous. All the little things they, quite frankly, dreamed about during the night. They talked and determined that they were ready to do them again. They had slept together, yes. They had, in fact, previously engaged in this act several times. And Natsuki remembered it all— every second.

  
  


Timidly removing her vest, Yuri angled her nose downward in an attempt to hide her face in nothing, her eyes closed. It made her breasts bounce when she contorted one arm, then the second, in similar fashion to one another They only hopped slightly, as they were still contained within her favorite laced bra. She had worn it especially for this today; so cozy and warm. Snug, but not in a way which made the voluptuous organs come under any significant pressure. Her shoulders and midriff were exposed now. The curvature of her back made her look like a snake when she would glance at Natsuki; it came up into her shoulders which were round and glistening, poreless in the light. Her stomach swerved its way down into the deviously wide curves that were her hips. She had an innie for her belly button, the crowning jewel on this body, angelic in its form, as it revealed itself to Natsuki’s eager eyes.

Two consecutive snaps were heard before an almost soundless echo as she unbuckled her bra straps and allowed the cups the fall to the ground, the weightless malleability leaving her nipples exposed. They were erect, towers of sand-colored flesh with areolas covered in perking dunes. Ripples formed on them to start before they polished into a set of dirty-blond towers crowning her mountains. Coming up towards the base of her neck with lines like rivers outlining her shapely flow, these were attached to steep —or sharp— curves comprising either side of her chest which then rounded into tantalizingly perfect ovals. All of them were a piece of the other: the fleshy towers, bumping disks in puddles at the bases of those erect buttons, and the jiggling mounds ellipsing one another in the limited real-estate on Yuri’s front which was barely, painfully holding them in place.

Natsuki, staring with dilated pupils, mumbled at the sight of Yuri’s curvaceous body. “I… I, um, really like them.” She began to blush, her cheeks a pinkish hue just below the eyes. 

“Oh….” Turning her head away, Yuri hid her cheeks, now reminiscent of Natsuki’s, in her hair. “D-do you—hum—do you want…?” Yuri lifts her hand in a pseudo-groping manner. She glances forward, expecting a gesture she assumed would be affirming in response; her presumption was correct.

“Well, don’t just stand there.” Speaking in a slightly hurried tone for reasons which sounded scolding, though Yuri assumed were impatient, Natsuki opened her mouth at Yuri. She beckoned the girl with her eyes— hungry and desiring.

Yuri situated herself on the edge of the bed before shuffling closer, afterwords speaking in a meek tone: “Is this good?” 

She had a look of genuine curiosity which Natsuki found oddly endearing. Just something about how inquisitive she was sitting there with an open and vulnerable eye peeking out from beneath purple curtains Natsuki indescribably coveted. 

Without answering Natsuki took a hand and began to tap her fingers along the sides of Yuri’s torso. Her pinky rose first, grazing the ledge of Yuri’s hips— her ring and index finger followed— then her middle would get caught and the nail would press against Yuri’s flesh; Yuri tingled at the sensation. The skin felt velveteen under Natsuki’s, and she would often recall its scent upon feeling such a fabric. Sighing she began to enjoy its aroma, letting it titillate her nose with distractions of what was to come. With a flick of her hair, brushing it against her lover’s face, she inhaled lightly, soaking her olfactories in the scent. 

The smell was subtle, but it was there. It had a certain quality to it, a kind of cottage-esc undertone. The sort of smell that dissipated upon moving, yet it was easily settled wherever one wished it to be when near its source.

_ Yes. Yes it was. _

She loved it. It turned her on, made Natsuki hot when she wiffed it. Sending her into a world of bliss, the smell encaptured everything about this girl she was feeling. A lust so overpowering it warranted a shaky moan from her lips and a tremble from her leg. She wanted her. She wanted her so, so badly.

Yuri, bravely assuming, took her hand and ran it up Natsuki’s thigh, cupping her hands around the flesh that she wished so desperately to touch. Smooth and cotton-like, Natsuki’s skin was irresistible. She had a divine gift, that girl. She, Yuri, was lusting after her; She, her company, was distracted, perhaps, by this same yearning.

She had to let it be known that she was having thoughts, feelings, emotions, emissions seemingly innumerable to her rushing head. The feelings pummeled her mind with the thought of lying with the Rubenesque woman she now had locked in a conjoined, sucking pair of lips, tongue swirling in a hurricane of saliva. She bit Yuri’s lip as she pulled away, stopping to suckle— the resulting suction reverberating in their skulls.

Then Natsuki put her arms above her head, pulling off her shirt before tossing it to the ground and bouncing slightly as if to highlight her perking tits. Her nipples were oscillating on minute paths. She had gone braless in her sleep the night before, and Yuri had noticed.

Kissing, sucking, licking her way down Natsuki’s neck, leaving a hickey on her upper-right, Yuri slowly traversed the tiny body in her arms. Craving a plea, she made her way down to the girl’s breasts and nibbled lightly on their pink protrusions, —first the right, then the left— and she kissed Natsuki’s torso. She made her way down Natsuki’s stomach, stopping, breathing on her lightly before kissing again; Yuri stopped at her thighs. Glancing up at her, Yuri gave a look of questioning before noticing Natsuki’s pleading face; she was going to go farther.

“P-please,” Natsuki quivered. “Please, Yuri… I….” She trailed off as she felt Yuri’s breath on her tummy lower to the button on her pants. 

Yuri pulled at it with her teeth, a growling moan coming from her as she prepared to dig into this delicious body she could smell— so sweet, the musk was. The button came undone, her revealing Natsuki’s blue, striped panties. Yuri tugged at them while Natsuki lifted her hips to allow for their removal, then they waited as they stared, marveled at one another before Natsuki began to moan.

Natsuki, still eagarly moaning, bucked her hips upward towards Yuri’s nose so that she could almost taste the curving, pink fruit in front of her now; delectable and alluring, it inspired lust at its very presence. She wanted it…. She wanted it, so bad. She could practically feel her consumption, inch by inch she would fall into that world, Yuri’s world. A world of complete subordination— and she wanted that, all it had to offer. 

“Yuri, please. You’re so close. I want you to have me, have my body, taste every inch, make it all yours. Please, Yuri! I’m begging. I’ll do whatever you tell me.” She had a look of desperation as she spoke, as if her entire being were hanging by a thread to be saved only by Yuri’s words, her commands. This little girl was giving herself to the will of a chaining line of chaos, but she did not know that. She was helpless to control herself when acting this way with Yuri; she did know that. She felt exhilarated by this danger. The act of throwing herself into the will of another gave her a sense of solitude rather than connection. She was alone with no one but herself, no one to keep her from becoming part of this collective mass she felt herself begin to recede into as she was pleading to be fucked. 

She felt a tendril slide its way around her before finding its way to her most vulnerable area, the part of herself she could no longer protect. Fully exposed, she was forced to lay dormant as the seeking swirl coiled its way around her, leaving her breathless with its circular movements. It was in her now, a part of her, exploring her innards, a wondrous experience for both her and the seemingly ever-lengthening muscle that was tasting her— feeling her— engulfed in her. She writhed and squirmed at its every movement, the endless sensations pleasing her now as they assaulted her very being.

Looking up before speaking, Yuri, her face dripping, smiled as she saw the begging girl enjoying being eaten; she was a snack, Yuri’s snack. 

“Your taste, I love it,” she moaned before kissing Natsuki’s thighs. They were soft, almost polished, and Yuri had them all to herself. She knew that for certain.

  
  


There was that voice again, only this time it was a man’s, Natsuki was sure of it. It called out to her in an irritated demand for her attention. Natsuki didn’t recognise it, but she still turned towards its source with the expectation of meeting an authoritative face she had grown to fear. And, sure enough, there he was, a bulbous man with hair waving in thin, jaggad ebbs down his back. His suit was conforming to his body only by the bowtie holding its two edges together, making him look like a pot with a lid barely holding down a boiling soup of bravado. His repressed rage was all but physically engulfing his face; it certainly was a veil surrounding his aura. He swiveled on his chair to more easily face her, a subtle smirk on his face. Natsuki began to wonder if she could bolt out the door without being grabbed. 

She decided against it, on account of her leg’s twinge that had brought her here in search of shelter before her cab arrived to take her home. Not her home with him, the place she often went. Her home where she would be safe— her home with—

  
  


“Yuri!” Natsuki exclaimed, her voice breathy and second to her sounds of pleasure evoked by the dominatrix owning her body. “Oh my god! Yes, please. Just like like that.” She loved the feeling of being tied down, of being beaten and punished, of submitting to the feelings of arousal she felt bubbling from within her as if a long-dormant craving for the familiar feel of involuntary pleasure. Being held there, feeling every inch of her body rendered helpless was intoxicating and gave her a sense of connection to something she never thought was hers to claim. The bindings holding her were like her closest companions. They were a familial set of chains with paternal likeness in Natsuki’s classification of them relative to her more childish label of her own place within this realm of her sole dispositional system of organization.

There she was nothing but what her master told her she was to be. She lived only to please her in the very way she breathed, the rhythm of her heartbeat, all of it was under the control of her master: a nameless, formless, genderless, voiceless, commanding entity to whom she would fall under complete control. Natsuki had become tied to this thing as it wrapped its metal tendrils around her wherever it liked. The sounds of clamping, clanking, scratching metal holding her firmly in her place as she was moved by the jerking will of her master’s hand.    

She heard the handcuffs clinking against the bed frame and felt their softer ends rubbing against her wrists and ankles as she convulsed and writhed at the movements which she was forbidden from seeing. That was what she was told, that she had to lay and take everything that came to her without so much as the slightest warning before her body was subjected to them. She loved every second of it, and would pant while she was caught in a submissive's limbo between exhaustion and anticipation, both of which could curl around her at any moment. She could become shrouded in a cloud of sexual release, or teased to the point of pleading for the shivering that would come creeping its way up her body when in the grip of immeasurable, sudden pleasure depending solely on what Yuri wanted. 

The way Natsuki moved her hips, her wails and moans, the lack thereof, the pleading utterances, and the gasps of climax— Yuri loved it all. It made her feel empowered. No longer shackled to her meekish tendencies, she was able to own, rule, and dominate her pet with no more than a command and the threat of a whip beating against her slutty subordinate's skin, which she knew Natsuki would take.

“You fucking disgust me, whore,” Yuri would say, as she slid the buzzing dildo farther into Natsuki’s shivering warmth. Yuri felt its energy emanate throughout the mechanical stick, Natsuki’s energy, her warmth that she granted it. She gave it the ability to move inside of her at Yuri’s control. First the tip, then the sliding spring pumping it inside of her— the ridges so defined, and touching her walls as it crowded the inside of its newfound cavern. This home it had was temporary, but Natsuki did not know, nor did she care to know. This was happening now and, even if she wished it not, it would continue. This atmosphere she gave it would remain as the sliding motions continued. It would enclose the air around Yuri’s tool as she slid in and out, the vibratory sounds still reaching her ears despite Natsuki’s wails. They had an agreement, and Yuri had every intention of keeping it at whatever cost the degrading tactics she used had on this, her eager and subordinate slave. 

Natsuki would comply, agree with the label, answering her master with an eagerly energetic affirmation. She was a whore, she would say to her assirvive, strong, and worthy master. A worthless, disgusting, imbecilic whore with nothing to achieve in this world but serving her master, that’s what she was. She was Yuri’s slut, an airheaded bitch to be fucked and disregarded as nothing more than the filth on Yuri’s shoes. Never leaving, never disobeying, never shying away from punishment, never wanting anything but to please her generous mistress, and to fulfill her desires without question; and she loved it. 

It made Yuri feel so powerful, the lust Natsuki had for her. She was able to make this empty shell whatever she desired. She was able to fill it with her wants and her fantasies, thoughts so deviant and sexually taboo they were almost unheard of. She could make Natsuki do anything she could think of; she was bending over backwards. Natsuki was letting her do anything to make her happy. This girl was her property, her toy— and she loved it.

  
  


The man was gaining a look of eagar impatience which firmly established, at least in Natsuki’s mind, his connection to the part of this metropolitan nightmare that was the maze of alleys she frequented like they had the legitimacy of a small-town’s convenience store owned by the local monarch of business —as if to give an aura of hierarchical subordination— who was both revered in his presence and hated in his absence by those who were meant to be his most loyal subjects: the employees, the membership of which excluded only the elderly and outsiders, prompting a cultural underbelly to the otherwise tranquil village. Perhaps there wasn’t such a difference between the man and that king as he began to lift himself to the stubs Natsuki’ assumed were feet, and the coat he wore draped in a long carpet of ghastly resemblance to his prior position flapped behind him. Beginning to walk towards the object of his bellows for attention, the gaze of zealous longing turned into the shrouding look of entitlement to her answering him with the speed and title by which he wished to be known. His hair spread about his head, drooping below his neck and onto his shoulders in much the same way as the cape below it. His entire presence demanded attentiveness to his word, and he was well aware of the effects his stature brought upon those whom he encountered. As such, he moved closer to Natsuki in the hopes of grasping her in his blocky fingers and guiding her wherever he pleased. She would remain his, and of that he was certain.

Natsuki began anxiously fiddling with her thumb and began panting when she opened her mouth in astonished fear at the man before her. She felt helplessness at the sight of her bulbous monster inching his way nearer to her, and she began to notice a hint of connection to him as he did so. It was somehow common to her, feeling the way she felt now, but she did not know this until she had left her seat in an attempt to rescue herself from the impending claws she would fall victim to if she was not to escape. 

Making an attempt for the door, she passed by the man in denim flirting with the girl who was now thoroughly intoxicated and would most likely be taken advantage of and forced to touch him in ways which she would no other men then those she met in places just like this. Natsuki received a glance as she passed the girl and her newest spider with disguised motives, trapping herself willingly in his web of lustful inebriation. 

_ She was a good girl, she swore.  _


	7. The Morning After

Beginning the morning after with the preparation of breakfast, Natsuki has noticed Yuri’s distinct lack of food of this meal’s traditional variety. She smiles to herself, knowing full well the minute inconvenience this deficiency in foodstuffs hailing from the farms in the now chemically induced habitats the animals responsible for their production was compared to the cold instability she would face without this house to shield herself from much the same fate as the animals suffering in the cramped cages of the factory farms which the ever-growing demand for sustenance from the human race would inevitably necessitate being made in the construction of countless metal boxes spanning acres of land; one such creature being a stumbling clutz of a rooster, much too big for his liking, who had named himself Doug.

Doug would move form slightly to the left to slightly to the right, but never would he make it so far as to not meet beak-to-beak with another clucking bird whose cockish behavior prompted him to cease his struts and calls for other companions of a more chicken-like, which was to say female, essence to interact with. Those with whom he shared his cell were so dominating and seemingly innumerable in their calls that he adopted this pessimistic attitude on account of his seemingly inadequate ability to force himself to whichever spot he wished. Rather than being thrown from here to there, to there to here, the only way he was able to attract a suitable mate was, from his perspective, to toughen up and become so emboldened as to resemble nothing of his former self, and to bury his reputation as the pushover he was into oblivion. But this was not possible given the interconnectedness of the coup, thus prompting a shift in focus from remaining safe and unknown to as many as possible to becoming aggressively defensive of his pacifism— an oxymoronic attitude provoking a much more angry version of himself than anticipated. As a result, he one day noticed a very distinct feeling for one particular chicken which he had never before had the pleasure of viewing, if even from afar. For her he felt feelings of connection which he had never before experienced on such a level that it caused him to undergo a series of changes —both in his internal thoughts, and the outward appearance from which this newfound catharsis resulted— which could only be described as a sudden, jolting epiphany of what was necessary in order for his happiness to be attained: he had to establish boundaries with a forcefulness he had been exclusively applying to his insistence on the validity of his belief in that constructed hypocritical virtue, leading to such actions which would frequently result in the endangerment of his own life, and its benefit to the greater good of the well-being of others’ lives at the expense of his own.

Of course this was not the result of the aforementioned perpetuation of dysfunctional cycles, as even with its natural tendency to result in patterns of enablement harmful to himself and the beneficiary, Doug would frequently find that he could do nothing to help himself in his times of need when there were so many others around him who demanded more. So much more, in fact, that he was unable to keep himself from feeling incapable of attaining the one thing which seemed to restore his confidence in himself, his ability to do things correctly.

 _Get me those pellets. You should give me that spot. Let me step on you to reach the better food._ All of these things, as well as several others, were all blended together in a storm of frightening demands to regain his independence with a seemingly unattainable ransom. He was told in a manner which, even if on the surface seemed kind and benevolent, would appear in his mind as a threat to his safety to begin walking down from one section of this cage to another, the girls all laughing at his compliance from which he was helpless to break free; he had accepted, reluctantly so, his fate as a footstool. There was, however, still a part of him which yearned to be respected, to regain the likeness of his ancestors as a proud and strutting breed ruling the fields as they had for centuries before their internment in these metal boxes where they lay disregarded as nothing more than a source of protein for some ungrateful child’s breakfast to be thrown underneath the table because he didn’t like the way the yolk —the potential baby, a life waiting to form— jiggled when not cooked to utter perfection. The thought of his state as one of those creatures saddened him greatly, and he began to own that sadness, to dwell on its implications for his worthiness as a member of the once proud fowl that roamed undomesticated and free. It did nothing but suppress him more into that submissive, degrading role which he had adopted as his only meaning in life; he had claimed it as his, and his alone.

With this ownership of his occupation as a perpetual pushover came a subtle resentment for those whom he had initially set out to assist. The anger would rage in his mind and cause him misery wherever he would go, knowing full well his inability to say no to a request would damn him to an emotional investment in his helpee far too great for him to simply put behind him when his job had finished. That was, until meeting one such particular bird who grew to feel the same level of passion for his own life as a kind individual who wanted nothing but to eliminate the suffering of those around him. She would go on to fall in love with Doug, and so would he do the same with her. This began a romance unlike any the two had seen: a dancing in the thin slits of moonlight peering through the windows of their prison, the continued commitment to a life of open catharsis and emotional vulnerability whenever one needed to act in such a way in front of the other, and a complete, unwavering, continuous investment in one another's lives.

And yet it was fated to end one summer day when the doors finally opened, as they did every so often, to welcome —or perhaps to trap— the birds without so much as a day outside of this prison to the world of corn and fresh, bountiful gravel; of fields basked in sun; of fresh, crisp air flowing in newly widened expanses; and of metal machines whirring with a furry known to them only by the sounds they heard from afar— sounds which they soon discovered the source of when released from their cages. It was here that the lovers —two birds connected with beasts man would never see whose monstrously predatory cries would strike fear into all who lie within earshot— were now released with horrified clucks and cocks as they were forced to lay eyes upon the urban monster which sat chomping its manmade teeth in hungry anticipation.

With a single motion, Doug would cease. All of his time spent attempting to better the lives of those around him culminating in his digestion by the unfeeling beast in which his lover would soon follow. Doug was thus unable to see the face of his one true love as she looked on in horrified sadness at his demise. She was soon to be slung by the same hands into a mess of teeth, cogs, gears heaving as she was, though not for the same reasons. They were unfit for selection to be packaged away into the grocery store shelves which, they would never know, was their real purpose for having been bred; therefore, they were the last two of what might as well just have been chunks of meat and bones out of the hundreds, still awaiting their deaths in whatever form it may befall them, to be thrown into this machine before its final retirement to its own hellishly gnawing, mechanical destruction in the two-minute break before the end of the shift which the man with the hands now responsible for the aforementioned fowls’ death knew also was —and had gladfully prepared to be, albeit in a melancholy fashion for reasons he did not say— his last.         

_I wonder if she has any bread and jam._

Natsuki began rummaging through the cupboards, as she had done the night before, in search of a loaf of bread which she promptly found tucked behind the plethora of mugs Yuri would place so tediously it seemed as if she did not wish to disrupt them from their slumber. Natsuki moved them in a way which emulated this belief— rightfully so, considering her hostess had fallen back to sleep in the room to which she was adjacent. She found the jam in a refrigerator compartment and sat down to begin crafting a mediocre breakfast of toast and orange juice.

Rubbing her eyes and stepping into the kitchen, Yuri yawned and stirringly spoke.

“Natsuki, what are you—”

“Hey look, sleeping beauty is awake,” Natsuki quips. “ You know, there’s a serious lack of options for breakfast here. Do you even eat breakfast? I mean, come on, nothing? _Seriously_?”

“I-I’m sorry. I usually skip breakfast in favor of tea. I….”

“Yuri, calm down. I’m not going to judge you. Here, I made you some tea. You really like chai.” Natsuki saw the look of shame on Yuri’s face and quickly changed her tone. She didn’t want to risk upsetting her.

They would continue to talk about nothing in particular before Yuri brought up, in a very subtle way, the sexual encounter which she admitted was the most thrilling she’d ever had. This line of conversation would continue into the mid-afternoon when Natsuki was thoroughly interested in staying the night for fear of, what she called, stuff that might happen to her if she went out at this hour. So, Yuri permitted her staying there another night, as she would for many afterward, most of them consecutive, which the girls used to discuss a variety of topics. One such conversation, leading to a sudden realization for them both, transpired in tandem with a summer afternoon sit-down for tea on the creaking backyard chair swing.  

“So, do you ever wonder what you would do if you knew what was going to happen to you. Like, if you could see the future or something like that?” Natsuki looked onward with a curious expression on her face fitting of somebody who was so ignorant of the same hypothetical events she had just referenced. Her eyes, like pools of paint, were highlighting her curiosity.

Yuri began looking at her friend with a longing to know what her eyes held beyond their pinkish exterior, what the quivers and scintillating fluids signaled about the mind of this girl. What had prompted this question she could not be sure, but she was pondering this in her mental kingdom. Nonetheless, she was able to think about such motives in the time usually allotted for one to copulate with their mind’s eye, birthing an answer which was as passionately cathartic as sex often was and would, therefore, remind them of their lust for one another.

“If I had such eyes to see what was to be a mystery, I would cease to find the grace and beauty which one would have when eyeing a tree. So lush and full are its branches, stretching out to an ethereal aim, enigmatic in its height, much like the answer to your plight.” A smile ends Yuri’s poetic retort, one that Natsuki would undoubtedly find endearing.   

“That’s really stupid. You’re supposed to make me feel better by being dumb, but your answer was actually kinda good, idiot.” Natsuki puffs out her cheeks.

Recoiling from Natsuki’s words, there was a smile for only an instant on Yuri’s face as she began coyly apologizing, which she knew would make Natsuki blush. But this was necessary, as her intentions were to lure this girl into a storm of emotional catharsis she knew was on the horizon. Thus, she spoke, with intense modesty, of the way Natsuki’s cheeks were more alluring than the roses on a chilled evening; like silken sheets, soft and warm, as if they were to have recently dried in a whirling machine that warmed its every fiber; how her face was a shade which, physically and idiomatically, paled in comparison to the reddening cockles, full of a passionate love for this girl, within Yuri’s heart. She said all of these things, with the confession solely in her mind. That was were they were safe, and where she was most comfortably able to express them. Her response was meager, little more than apologetics, allowing Natsuki to continue.

“Well, you should be sorry, making me feel all intimidated. I could never measure up to that, dummy. You’ll never take what I say seriously now, will you?” The question left Natsuki’s lips with a pleading tone. There was a pause before she spoke again. “Do you even care that I care? That what you said made me feel silly? Why can’t you just say something normal for once, and not all fancy and smart? Damnit, Yuri! Why couldn’t I do it?

“Why could you not have said what I have is what you mean, yes?”

“No, you idiot,” a pre-sob swallow briefly quiets her. “Why couldn’t I have stayed strong and started living without him?” She began feeling an insecurity well up inside her which she hadn’t felt for what seemed like ages. She began to cry; she had been wailing for about five minutes before speaking again, sniveling. “I just wanted it to be over, and then it was. But I,” a pause as she took her face away from its place buried in Yuri’s shoulder, “I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t live knowing that he was going to lay there dead while I was the only one who knew what happened— what he did to…. How he just….”

Quietly, Yuri began to stand and walk with the blubbering Natsuki as they both wore long faces and shuffled towards the porch door, Natsuki’s incomplete remorse acting as a sort of background music. It was quiet and rhythmic, filled with a quiet catharsis long held dormant in the recesses of her mind. Once they had entered the house, they sat together with tea brewing on the stove’s backmost burner as if it was meant to be an afterthought, a regretful adherence to pavlovian strings of habit all pulling them to a mutual preparation: Yuri tending to her tea, and Natsuki to her unspoken, expectant place at the table with the chair woven with pink thread between its wicker strands. Afterward, Natsuki began to speak, through exhales and gulps, of her father’s treatment of her. She talked of him as a horrific being of unpredictably expressive, irrational demands which, she slowly began to realize, were the expected behaviors of her, even by those not affiliated with him, or the parental role he claimed to fulfill, in any way

He was, by all accounts recalled, a man whose thirst for rum never was never quenched, and whose hunger for egotistical morsels torn of the souls of those around him never allotted the room necessary for him to be properly critiqued. This lead, as was typical of men haunted by such patterns of self-destruction, to his inevitable unemployment and subsequent impoverishment, yet he still found money, miraculously, for booze and nightly outings where he would spawn a dozen more children left to much the same fate as his own; they would be sitting, just as Natsuki was, recounting the same stories as hers. Ones with men that had arms seemingly tied with bundles of lines all baiting these mostly ignorant new mothers into a life of toxicity so vile that the end result would leave both they and their child to the mercy of the winds, cold and unfeeling, of subjugation and degrading, drug-ridden, endlessly lifelong sexual enslavement.     

Natsuki had seen this all herself, of course. The nights spent asleep in a stranger’s bed were so innumerable that she seldom remembered what particular series of events led her to wake next to a nameless figure, hardly distinguishable from the others she had seen in the same position, as they stirred when she began to clothe herself— snapping her undergarments with ropes that had a spindly width, leaving a supple consistency to their movements as they tied, clung, bounded themselves restrictively onto and off, with similar difficulty, her shoulders. She was bound, much as her bra straps, to this life, and she would be so seemingly forever.

**Author's Note:**

> Since this is my first time writing fan fiction, any feedback is appreciated.
> 
> Story inspired by this art:
> 
> http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1339743-doki-doki-literature-club


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